"Go ahead and vote this November. But don't waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a lever for a third-party candidate -- just enough to register your obstruction and defiance -- and then get back out onto the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided." -- Chris Hedges; Journalist
...or, "Don't Whack Off in Wilmington", and Other Tales....
"Who are these people?"
I asked this question the other day of a friend of mine, after discussing the outlandish bullshit coming from the ultra Religious Right. We were sitting in this place, one of my favorite breakfast-places in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Sitting there among the aging hippie boomers and the pierced/tattooed 'Portlandia' crowd who were busy getting their grub-on via French omelettes and organic side-salads with plenty of Stumptown Coffee's finest, it was a little hard to view the world as spinning off its sociopolitical axis.
"I don't know, Will. I honestly don't know."
She was telling the truth - neither she (or most others here in the People's Republic of Oregon) have any idea what these people are about. The Religious Right has a guilty-pleasure allure to those of us who are fascinated with their efforts to destroy what's left of American culture, though - it's akin to watching a train-wreck, or seeing someone blow their lunch after riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair - we're horrified; yet compelled to watch....
Here's something to ponder as we begin the run-up to war with Iran, courtesy of one of my favorite poets:
Engines bear them through the sky: they’re free And isolated like the very rich; Remote like savants, they can only see The breathing city as a target which
Requires their skill; will never see how flying Is the creation of ideas they hate, Nor how their own machines are always trying To push through into life.
But ideas can be true although men die, And we can watch a thousand faces Made active by one lie:
And maps can really point to places Where life is evil now: Nanking; Dachau.
Then watch this - it's by a couple of home-schooled Fundie girls from Oklahoma.
(Cautionary Tale: This is what happens when kids are brainwashed - they eat bullshit like it was caviar, and regurgitate it in videos like this. These well-scrubbed Hitler Youth for Jesus are perfectly content with throwing 250+ years of American democracy down the drain and dragging us right back to the Middle Ages.
In fifteen years, they're going to be running things.
Never in a million years (if I may use that overused line) would I have believed what I’m seeing in American politics today.
From nowhere, Rick Santorum has come within an ace of the #1 spot in the Republican primary race-to-the-bottom. As impossible as it might sound, Santorum’s brand of ultraRight swagger and Fundie bullshit has garnered him several caucus and primary wins. Next week, there’s a ‘do or die’ primary in Mitt Romney’s home-state of Michigan; while he was leading in double-digits as recently as ten days ago, the race is now literally too close to call.
I have no analysis for this. Examining this process is like viewing a new strain of Ebola under the microscope; something which is at once deadly and untreatable, and for which none of the old rules apply....
(Read the rest here. Leave your two-cents in the 'Comment' jar...)
Last night, I heard something sincerely pathetic. I heard a man beg for his job on national TV.
Understand something. I detest reality-TV; it gave us Snooki and added “G-T-L” to the vernacular. It gave us Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, who from their not-so-rareified digs in the same studio in Connecticut, gave us “Who be my baby daddy?”, and “When it comes to Little Baby X, Cletus, you ARE the father!” That said, last night's escapade was one of the saddest pieces of reality-TV I've seen.
I’ll admit, President Obama tried to take the high road – last night, we heard the ‘statesman’ persona speak, in contrast to the goat-rodeo going on in the Great Traveling Republican Tent-Revival and Debate Circus – but once you peel back the onion just a bit, you’ve got pure shuck-‘n-jive.
Oh. There was ‘hope’ and ‘change’ involved, too.
Still in all, last night's speech was pure reality-TV. Through all the tap-dancing, it’s easy to forget how completely fragile his tenure in office really is, especially when watching that rodeo on the other side of things; admittedly, he looks good when the current crop of Republicans is considered. Still, last night I watched Obama give what may likely be the last major speech of his political life before he fades into obscurity and a well-heeled government-pension-with-perks. Why?
I saw this today, and it tore at my heart - this little fellow was born one month after his father was killed in Afghanistan, not to free others or for a genuine cause, but to continue the Empire's war on freedom and democracy.
We have more blood on our hands than we can ever wash clean.
We have created more enemies than we can ever kill.
We have created more orphans than will ever forgive us.
Some of you were recently confused about religion.
I understand. It's a confusing topic. Is Mormonism really a branch of Christianity? What about Wicca? Am I really a closet Hindu, because I love Vindaloo?
Forecasts, Predictions and Prognostications For A New Year
With pseudo-apologies to one of my least-favorite bands, I can’t think of a more-fitting title for this piece. Reason? It’s where we’re headed – either by rocket-sled or on roller-skates, depending on one’s point of view.
Let’s get to the show….
Politics – Whether it’s the Dems in Charlotte or the Reps in Tampa, both conventions are already prime targets for the Occupy movement. This is shaping up to make the Kodak Moment of Chicago, 1968 look like a church picnic. It’s a foregone conclusion that the Dems are going to nominate Obama for four more years of pandering and selling out to the variant grifters, hacks and hucksters on Wall Street, plus caving in to the remnants of the Bush-era terrorism-paranoiacs. The Reps are going to nominate Romney in spite of the gyrations of Paul, Gingrich, and the rest of the evangelical goat-rodeo which has come to symbolize the majority of the Republican party nowadays. The money-people won’t put cold, hard cash behind someone who believes that pushing the button down is part of ‘god’s plan’; they’ll look the other way on the whole magic-underwear bit as long as the rest of the man is docile and compliant – which is Romney, to a ‘T’....
Cognitive Dissonance and Other Party Conversation In The Clubhouse
I was invited to a party last night by one of my customers.
Understand, I’ve known this guy for the past thirty years – longer, on balance, than some of my readers have been alive, or at least cognizant of the world around them. Over those years, I’ve worked as a supplier of technology products, consulting advice and general sounding-board services to this man, so I’m virtual-family. On occasion, someone who’s up and coming either in his organization or in his own extended family will see me, not know me, and seek me out. This is what happened last night, with a young man in his (I’m hazarding a guess here) late twenties; one of those more-or-less distant relatives of the core-group; he was on the periphery of nearly every discussion.
He wasted no time asking me about my political beliefs. I was noncommittal, which led him to explain his – the country’s government is all screwed up, and all we really need to do is (1) get rid of Obama, then (2) a magical era will ensue, where life will be like it was when he was in his late teens and (I’m assuming) living at home with a set of parents who actually had a 401K and two cars and a house and the money to send him to college....
(Seems a few folks are at-odds about what it really means to be a Libertarian.
Some think that the whole thing is the idea of John Birchers, Ayn Rand, and maybe green aliens. Well; not green aliens. But almost.
Others think it was the idea of Robert Heinlein. Or a wannabe named Spider Robinson. [did his Momma give him that name? Oh, well....]
In fact, there are quite a few - the majority of 'em nowadays, really - that I don't believe are Libertarians at all.
Then there's me. Read on. I wrote this a couple of years ago, and it's still true today. Have fun....)
I've gotten some pretty incisive hate-mail recently due to my stand on health-care.
One person pointed out that as I'm an atheist, I 'wasn't capable of understanding the "real America." '
Another was polite in her suggestion that I would be 'better suited in another country where my beliefs were more in keeping with the majority.'
Yet another told me that the First Amendment didn't apply; that America was a "Christian nation", and that if I didn't like it, I should 'get the hell out and leave the place to real Americans.'
However, the one that really got me was from a gal who'd been a longtime reader (until she fell in-company with the Birthers and other Fundiewhacks) who told me that because I supported national health-care, I couldn't possibly be a Libertarian.
Y'see - I registered as a member of the Libertarian Party in 1988. I was a delegate to their convention here in Portland a few years back. I've been a Libertarian since before it was cool - and I can tell you that a lot of people who are calling themselves Libertarians are one step removed from being Fascists....
Imagine, if you will, the aftermath of a battle; the field is strewn with shattered artillery limbers, dead horses, stacks of dead infantry in hollow-squares, and smoke-tendrils wisping skyward from broken trees. In one corner of the field, however, is an untouched mansion. Not a hole; not a hoofprint in the lawn – the whole thing has passed it by.
Inside is a party, which was previously scheduled and which is going on apace; wine and whiskey is flowing, girls are getting pinched by lecherous old bastards with more money than either sense or morals, and the only thing anyone’s really worried about is whether they’ll run out of alcohol before sundown.
Afterward, everyone will take to their beds or their carriages, not knowing at all what’s just happened – nor will they care, much past the thought of what they had to pay the servants. They’re a class of people who gets to stay behind after sending a nation off to war....
"To ignore the past is to remain forever a child."
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero; Roman statesman/philosopher
Every change-agent and visionary is a reader.
Why? Because ideas are immortal. Whether it was the French National Assembly, which wrote the Rights of Man and the Citizen; the Continental Congress, which wrote the Declaration of Independence, or the Occupy Wall Street general-assembly which wrote the list of Occupation demands, those ideas did not spring full-grown - they were taken from other writers.
It’s impossible to understand what’s going on in America without a solid background in what’s happened, and why. It's equally necessary to have this background to understand fully the nature of the problem and what's really at stake here.
I've created this list assuming that the reader is going to have a real grasp of world, as well as American history, and that they don't ascribe to the recent witch-hunting and book-burning approach of the ultraRight with their attempts to rewrite history in Texas and elsewhere.
Having a solid understanding of current events is necessary for a fundamental reason: Understanding the causes helps us connect the dots. Connecting the dots gives us a good idea about changing things and bringing about a better future.
To that end, I’ve created this list of fifteen books I consider indispensable to the education of people who want to involve themselves either with an Occupy group or another organization which is active in bringing about legitimate, permanent change....
(I know; I said these pieces were too hard to research, and didn't get anywhere near enough response - and while all that is still true, I had to drag this column out of retirement to bestow the Batshit of the Year Award.
In doing so, I had to consider three things - first, there were a LOT of bugfuck-nutsoids and batshit-crazoids to choose from. I mean, there's Rick Perry, who came in a close #2, for terminating 6,000 firefighters when half of his state was on fire, then renting a *whole friggin' stadium* to beg his Invisible Friend for rain - so whatever the winner did, it had to really stand out as true, unadulterated, no-holds-barred-and-hold-your-nose batshit.
Second, the award had to have meaning - in that, it had to go to a party which had really earned it, by the twin-virtues of being bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy all the time - as well as having performed a jumping-the-batshit-shark piece of egregious craziness which left everyone else wondering what happened.
Last, it had to reflect a microcosm of a much bigger, more significant - and hence, dangerous - bugfuck-nuts and batshit-crazy segment of society. So, submitted for your approval is my Batshit of the Year Award - The Duggars)....
It was bound to happen - the Fundies are weighing-in on the passing of Christopher Hitchens, one of the best thinkers, raconteurs, writers and philosophers of the last thirty years - gone too soon of cancer at age 62, he was also an outspoken atheist and the author of "God is Not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything".
He'll be missed. In the meantime, those of us who Don't Believe are, once again, feelin' the love (hat tip to the folks at Unreasonable Faith):
The other day, our President, Barack Obama, the first African-American elected to the nation’s highest office and a man who should by virtue of his skin-color if nothing else know a thing or two about a thing or two about the concept of the word, ‘freedom’, stated that he would not veto the National Defense Authorization Act.
Understand something.
The NDAA is a catch-all bill, made necessary because we decided after WWII that, as a nation, we were better off with than without a standing army. Because the Constitution calls for re-funding of any military appropriations beyond those to fund the Navy, Congress has to resort to a large, unwieldy piece of legislation to fund everything from the Iraq War to those $800 coffee pots about which you’ve all read.
It’s a huge document – and one in which all kinds of appropriations can (and are) hidden in the political weeds. This year is different, though, because the NDAA now contains verbiage which states that the military can declare anyone a ‘terrorist’ – then detain them without trial....
